Sullivan | UK's Timmons sticking to route

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Give Ryan Timmons a blank canvas and he’ll find a way to color outside of the lines.

In a sport that prizes structure, the University of Kentucky’s sophomore receiver specializes in spontaneity. He rose to football prominence at Franklin County High School through instinct, improvisation and superior speed, his playbook almost as superfluous as an instruction manual to an electrical engineer.

“In high school, I was just having fun, doing whatever, making up whatever (came) into my head,” Timmons recalled Tuesday afternoon. “I remember I was supposed to run an ‘out’ route, but I just made something up. Me and my quarterback, we had a great connection and I scored on that play. I don’t know what I ran. It wasn’t really a route. I was just out there running.”

To watch video of Timmons in high school is to imagine a rabbit being chased by a posse of penguins. A Class 2-A sprint champion who was generally the fastest man on the field, Timmons made his cuts so quickly that more than a few aspiring tacklers lost their balance and landed on the ground. His senior year produced 25 rushing and 16 receiving touchdowns and three more scores on the only three kickoffs that reached him.

Football came so easily to Ryan Timmons that he didn’t immediately appreciate the need for precise technique and choreographed steps. He discovered last fall that when you run pass routes in the Southeastern Conference, you’re not just out there running.

“When he first came here last year, he was hesitant,” UK receiver coach Tommy Mainord said. “We were asking him to do some things that he’d never done before as far as route-running goes. Never even attempted.”

Timmons caught 32 passes for 338 yards as a UK freshman, but he didn’t always run his routes at the right depth or make his cuts without decelerating. Accustomed to beating opponents through sheer athleticism, Timmons stepped up in class to find himself competing against players of comparable abilities and without the knowledge base necessary for sustained excellence. Timmons says he realized during last fall’s opener against Western Kentucky that he needed to be better prepared to compete in college football.

“If a route is supposed to be 10 yards, that’s what it needs to be,” Timmons said, standing temporarily still on UK’s practice field. “I messed up a few times, ran a deeper route, and that just confuses the quarterback, messes up his timing. He doesn’t know when to throw it and that’s when you get interceptions or sacks.

“I remember there were a few plays I wish I could take back where I could have run the route a lot harder and a lot farther at the right depth. You never know what could have happened in that game if I ran the right route, but I’ve learned from it and this year I can be a lot better player.”

Spectators at UK’s season opener Saturday against Tennessee-Martin may notice Timmons has returned for his sophomore year as a more muscular target. Having trimmed his body fat from 15 percent to 10 percent, the 5-foot-10 receiver who wears the number 1 will present a more chiseled appearance in his second season of college football. Yet the more meaningful difference in Timmons’ game may be visible only when he is in motion, as he refines his techniques for contending with linebackers determined to detour his routes and as he strives to make more seamless cuts to provide unobstructed paths for Patrick Towles’ passes.

As he gets the details down, Timmons’ numbers should move up. The encouraging strides Mainord saw last spring have been augmented by summer throwing sessions and have revealed a more polished player in fall camp.

“He’s perfected a lot of his skills in that regard,” Mainord said. “He’s still got a lot of room to grow, and he’ll be the first to tell you that. Just with little things, details on some things. But he’s playing faster because the game’s slowed down, his knowledge has gotten better, he’s got confidence in himself, (and) he’s proven to himself he can do it. So he’s moved a lot. He’s grown up a lot.”

What Ryan Timmons does best, though, is what you can’t teach. It’s his ability to create on cue, to find a crack of daylight amid converging tacklers, to make a sudden, unscheduled move that turns football into a footrace.

“With the ball in his hands, in space, he is very difficult to tackle,” Mainord said. “He makes people miss very well and is explosive. He can turn a normal play into a big play.”

He can make something up and make something happen.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714